‘They’re going to be a distraction’

The Nevada Youth Legislature -- high school students appointed by state senators to represent the 21 Senate districts in Nevada -- wants to see the top age for compulsory school attendance in the state reduced from 18 to 16.

The young Southern Nevada delegates gathered Thursday at the Sawyer Building in Las Vegas, linking to their Northern Nevada colleagues in Carson City via real-time video.

The group is empowered to submit one bill draft to the Legislature to be considered for enactment. The youth legislators debated 18 proposals -- including a state education "rainy day" fund, and creating a basic "life-skills class." But in the end, by a single vote, they chose to back the proposal of Dominic Mariani, a 17-year-old Carson City High School student who said his proposal to pare back mandatory attendance to age 16 is meant "to give students options."

"School is not for everyone," Mr. Mariani said. "If they don't want to be in school, they're going to be a distraction. That's going to impede everyone's education."

Jan Biggerstaff, a member of the State Board of Education who attended the session, praised the teens for their spirited debate, but expressed "strong reservations" about the winning proposal.

Nevada already has the lowest graduation rate in the nation at 47.3 percent, according to an annual survey by Education Week. Ms. Biggerstaff also questioned what a 16-year-old who elects not to attend school would do.

"No one is going to want to a hire a 16-year-old full time," she said.

Why? Because our modern education system has succeeded in arresting their development behind what the rest of the world expects of young adults that age?

In fact, far from being a radical new departure, allowing kids to leave school at age 16 would simply be a return to a policy that was considered normal through the nation's history.

At least through the 1960s, 10 years of schooling was considered perfectly adequate for the average American. (Admittedly, it would be interesting to see today's 15-year-olds tested on what ninth-graders were expected to know in 1960, let alone 1920 -- but that's a question of what today's public schools are actually doing with the life-years over which they're granted authority.)

Mr. Mariani -- who is certainly in a position to view the problem first-hand -- is correct. Not everyone wants to remain in school past age 16, when it's perfectly legal for them to enter the working world.

It was not so long ago that 17-year-old Americans who felt no vocation for higher learning could hold their heads high if they chose to leave school at that point to join the military, take up work in the family ranch or business, or else take up an apprenticeship in a useful trade -- which is precisely where those who leave school at age 16 should be steered.

The argument that the world is more complex today implies that our 17- and 18-year-olds are all mastering courses in complex technical skills unknown to their parents or grandparents.

For kids who actually have the vocation and motivation to go on to college, that's great. No one is saying the senior high schools should close, or that the opportunity to pursue higher education should be denied any young person based on race, social stature or anything else. But this proposal, remember, was drafted by bright high school kids who witness every day the impact of unmotivated cohorts being required to hang around, clogging the classrooms, taking up space, goofing off, and interfering with the studies of those who can still gain something from them.

High school diplomas should continue to be available to all who are willing to work to earn them, and their advantages publicized. But mandatory "education" for all through age 18 -- some have even now proposed age 21 -- is little more than a full-employment act for custodial educrats, bolstered by the long-discredited notion that there is some "limited number of jobs," meaning a 17-year-old seeking work thus "takes away the job" of a more skilled and seasoned worker, which is absurd.

Restoring the mandate to age 16 would be well within the Legislature's powers, and is well worth a full public debate.